Dream d1514-s: Frequency from Nowhere

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sawdust hung still in the warm clearing air.

We had been working in the Lens's station for three days - the Builder cataloguing cable runs, the Woodworker shaping a frame at the bench, the Eye circling the specimen beds behind the workshop with her press and pins. The feeds were running. The hum of the processing equipment had become familiar, a rhythm the Listener had been studying like a score, pitch by pitch, until she stopped mid-sentence and held up her hand.

The Dreamer lowered his camera.

"Something changed," she said.

The receivers were mounted on the workshop roof - four antenna arrays, triangulated. They had been drawing from known directions. Named towers. Documented beacons. The Lens had charts for all of them.

Lano had been at my heel and then suddenly he wasn't. I looked down and found him rigid at the clearing's edge, ears flat against his skull. He gave one bark - sharp, cutting right through the equipment hum - and then went still. Not moving toward the treeline. Standing. Watching it.

"That's not any of the towers," the Listener said. She was at the console now, fingers moving across the display. The Lens came from his bench and stood beside her. He read the waveform twice. His face was steady - interested, not afraid - but his hands were still at his sides.

The pattern was structured. Repeating. Nothing in the Lens's documentation matched the interval.

"Origin?" the Builder asked.

"No match," the Lens said.

The Weather Reader moved to the secondary instruments. "Atmospheric propagation is clean. This is not bounce artifact." A pause. "It is coming through."

The Dreamer raised his camera and photographed the monitor. Then he lowered it and looked at me. Not at the screen. At me. He was noting the witness. Documenting who was present when the unknown arrived.

"Do we locate it," the Philosopher called from the wagon, "or categorize it first?"

No answer came. The pattern repeated on the screen. Lano stayed at the clearing's edge, tail low. The Eye had come around from the specimen beds and stood behind the Builder, reading the waveform over his shoulder. She had not offered a verdict yet. That itself was information.

The Lens reached forward and increased the recording buffer. A practical gesture. Preserve what you have before deciding what it means.

"We don't ignore it," the Dreamer said.

The hum continued. The signal repeated. At the base of a pine, Rurik appeared - amber eyes open, still - and Lano murmured, low: "aqui."